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POD: Poems on Demand
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First published January 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 23, 2012
This chapbook-sized soil sample of Davis’s recent work makes me long to see the whole range. My favorite effect in these poems is “the swoop,” where Davis has you moving pleasurably in one register—quotidian, casual, urbane and absurd (“I passed the hamburger stand/With five dollars in my pocket”; “A half a saxophone/In the paint tray/With the chalk and/An inverted limousine”)—then drops from the sky for the kill. The sting usually comes in the form of a deflation, indicating the poem’s affective weight by what it seems to shrug off. Take, for instance,
RIDICULE
Sensible to have it under lock and key,
Or baby-latch at least.
In botany, known as pollarding.
Yes, very clever.
Its polarity
Can reverse suddenly.
Scribble, scribble, scribble,
Eh, Mr. Gibbon?
In fact, Jesus like Marlowe
Was capable of insult.
Remind me again
Why I care?
It was that last couplet that got me; looping back to see why reveals the poem’s careful prep for its final zip. Marianne Mooresque opening line, which amplifies the title like so many of Moore’s do, and puts us (like the later Gibbon name-check) somewhere in the 18th-century zone of instructive “manners and mores” verse: the realm of measured self-control (baby latch, not Yale lock) and capital-lettered Virtues and Vices: “Ridicule,” “Sensible,” etc.
“Pollarding” is pruning, so Ridicule—the poet’s of others, or others’ of the poet?—must aim to do that, cut down to size. Is it beneficial, or harmful? Helps some trees anyway. The agent of ridicule’s called out as “very clever” (perhaps by the ridiculed?) in that subtly dismissive, disapproving way we have with “clever” in the vernacular. Clever for comparing Ridicule to pollarding, lending it a corrective power it lacks? And who’s being clever? Is this Ridiculed talking to Ridiculer, or Devil and Angel on the poet’s own shoulders, urging him in turn to lock it down or let ‘er rip?
“Its polarity”—Ridicule’s—“Can reverse suddenly,” presumably making the ridiculer look ridiculous. “Scribble, scribble, scribble” is George III’s brother’s idiot response to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—know anything about the idiot? So one for the Angel, plus sticks and stones, etc. But now here’s the ridiculed, opening another sluice: words do hurt, why shake it off and pretend they don’t, with victims like Jesus and Marlowe for precedent?
The Rabbi Gone Wild and Elizabethan bad boy lift the poem out of its sensible 18th-century frame and hold it over an abyss deeper than these short, witty, densely allusive lines care to explore, hence the violent snap of the pullback: “Remind me again/Why I care”? Okay: it’s because you care a lot about the interpersonal ethics of ridicule, and about the feelings it provokes that threaten to destroy the poem’s frame, Poetry’s frame. And the “you” by now, if you’ve followed along this closely, is really “me,” or we: poet and reader in a kind of compact to acknowledge and resist Ridicule’s affect and power.
It’d be fun to do this for other poems—the fire of Buddha’s Fire Sermon pared down to a day at the beach in “Toothpaste Kids Sunburn,” or the universe dropping a tart “Good for you” on the poet in the magnificently titled “Chanting Monotonously,” or the feelingful but masterfully subdued “Everywhere you hear/Nature say ‘Oh’” that closes “Hello Thank You”—but Goodreads will probably cut me off if I keep going. Check it out for yourself & see if Davis is really our flarfy New York School Swift.
RIDICULE
Sensible to have it under lock and key,
Or baby-latch at least.
In botany, known as pollarding.
Yes, very clever.
Its polarity
Can reverse suddenly.
Scribble, scribble, scribble,
Eh, Mr. Gibbon?
In fact, Jesus like Marlowe
Was capable of insult.
Remind me again
Why I care?
It was that last couplet that got me; looping back to see why reveals the poem’s careful prep for its final zip. Marianne Mooresque opening line, which amplifies the title like so many of Moore’s do, and puts us (like the later Gibbon name-check) somewhere in the 18th-century zone of instructive “manners and mores” verse: the realm of measured self-control (baby latch, not Yale lock) and capital-lettered Virtues and Vices: “Ridicule,” “Sensible,” etc.
“Pollarding” is pruning, so Ridicule—the poet’s of others, or others’ of the poet?—must aim to do that, cut down to size. Is it beneficial, or harmful? Helps some trees anyway. The agent of ridicule’s called out as “very clever” (perhaps by the ridiculed?) in that subtly dismissive, disapproving way we have with “clever” in the vernacular. Clever for comparing Ridicule to pollarding, lending it a corrective power it lacks? And who’s being clever? Is this Ridiculed talking to Ridiculer, or Devil and Angel on the poet’s own shoulders, urging him in turn to lock it down or let ‘er rip?
“Its polarity”—Ridicule’s—“Can reverse suddenly,” presumably making the ridiculer look ridiculous. “Scribble, scribble, scribble” is George III’s brother’s idiot response to Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—know anything about the idiot? So one for the Angel, plus sticks and stones, etc. But now here’s the ridiculed, opening another sluice: words do hurt, why shake it off and pretend they don’t, with victims like Jesus and Marlowe for precedent?
The Rabbi Gone Wild and Elizabethan bad boy lift the poem out of its sensible 18th-century frame and hold it over an abyss deeper than these short, witty, densely allusive lines care to explore, hence the violent snap of the pullback: “Remind me again/Why I care”? Okay: it’s because you care a lot about the interpersonal ethics of ridicule, and about the feelings it provokes that threaten to destroy the poem’s frame, Poetry’s frame. And the “you” by now, if you’ve followed along this closely, is really “me,” or we: poet and reader in a kind of compact to acknowledge and resist Ridicule’s affect and power.
It’d be fun to do this for other poems—the fire of Buddha’s Fire Sermon pared down to a day at the beach in “Toothpaste Kids Sunburn,” or the universe dropping a tart “Good for you” on the poet in the magnificently titled “Chanting Monotonously,” or the feelingful but masterfully subdued “Everywhere you hear/Nature say ‘Oh’” that closes “Hello Thank You”—but Goodreads will probably cut me off if I keep going. Check it out for yourself & see if Davis is really our flarfy New York School Swift.
March 23, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews